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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27601595">grudges</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/dutchydoescoke/pseuds/dutchydoescoke'>dutchydoescoke</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Losers (2010)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon-Typical Violence, Light Angst, M/M, Pre-Slash, Sort of Hurt/No Comfort</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-20 11:13:31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,687</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27601595</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/dutchydoescoke/pseuds/dutchydoescoke</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Cougar has never been one for grudges. Anyone else will claim it’s a lie based on the fact that he tends to glare at people who’ve pissed him off, but it’s true. He doesn’t do grudges. Holding onto anger is pointless in the long run and risks fucking with his ability to do his job.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Carlos "Cougar" Alvarez/Jake Jensen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>51</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>grudges</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/liggytheauthoress/gifts">liggytheauthoress</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>happy birthday to my best babe, the platonic love of my life, my best friend, liggytheauthoress.</p><p>i started this forever ago and never really finished it, and while i still can't seem to properly finish it, i polished it a little bit and threw it here for you. so like. happy birthday. love you, darling. &lt;3</p><p>warnings for canon-typical violence and overprotective cougar.</p><p>no idk what this is, don't ask. if i can get my brain in gear and off boy bands for longer than ten seconds, i'll actually finish this, i swear.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Cougar has never been one for grudges. Anyone else will claim it’s a lie based on the fact that he tends to glare at people who’ve pissed him off, but it’s true. He doesn’t do grudges. Holding onto anger is pointless in the long run and risks fucking with his ability to do his job.</p><p>Until L.A.</p><p>Until Jensen is lying on the ground, bleeding from a bullet wound courtesy of Aisha.</p><p>The moment the gun fires and Jensen hits the carpet, Cougar’s world narrows down to his target and something too much like <em>rage</em> hits him like a hollowpoint to the chest. He doesn’t even actively decide it but his backup gun’s in his left hand and aimed at the door Aisha just dove through and he’s firing them both despite the fact that, between the rage and dual-wielding, his aim is shot to shit and he can’t hit a target six feet in front of him.</p><p>Aisha cries out in pain behind the wall, the sound echoing oddly, and some part of him that’s a little twisted hopes it was his shot that hit the mark, that she’s hurting as bad as Jensen.</p><p>The second he’s out of bullets, Cougar’s guns drop and he falls to his knees at Jensen’s side, reaching for a handkerchief to use as a makeshift bandage. He makes sure it’s only a graze, that none of the mirror shards got into it and binds the handkerchief around the wound as tight as he can, a substitute pressure bandage. The handkerchief won’t do long-term, but it’ll hold until he can stitch it up.</p><p>And he <em>is</em> the one to stitch it up. Even if he wasn’t their primary field medic, even if he didn’t have the steadiest hands, he’d have insisted because this was <em>Jensen</em>. It’s not like there was anything between them—too many years in the military, too many years under that <em>bullshit</em> policy—but Jensen is still his best goddamn friend and Cougar is supposed to have him covered so this <em>doesn’t</em> happen.</p><p>While Jensen chews on a toddler toy and holds far more still than most people would think him capable of, Cougar uses a travel sewing kit to stitch up the wound, careful to cause as little excess pain as he can, even though his only equipment is a sewing needle sterilized over a lighter and cheap thread.</p><p>The rest of them eye Jensen like they’re expecting him to start whining again, but this isn’t the time for histrionics and, contrary to popular belief, Jensen <em>does</em> know when to shut up. He’s breathing through the pain in a way that Cougar recognizes from when his sisters had kids but nobody’s stupid enough to give Jensen shit for it, not when it’s taking more self-control than he wants to admit to keep his hands steady instead of shaking with fury.</p><p>She betrayed them. Aisha betrayed them. And she hurt Jensen to do it.</p><p>He hadn’t even been fucking <em>armed,</em> either. She’d shot the one unarmed person in the room because Cougar had hesitated on the damn shot that he should have taken the second she pulled her guns on them, on <em>Jensen.</em></p><p>He’s the one of them that’s supposed to take the kill shot. He’s their sniper. He’s supposed to cover them and someone got hurt. Jensen got hurt.</p><p>If Cougar sees her again, he’s not going to hesitate, not after this.</p><p>---</p><p>He’s supposed to be in position to set off the fire alarm but he watches Jensen’s back instead, scope trained on him. Just in case.</p><p>Jensen, in an unintentional show of faith, doesn’t look up from tugging his jacket free of the barbed wire, even when the guard on watch calls to him.</p><p>Cougar adjusts his rifle and pulls the trigger, watching the guard slump as Jensen frees himself, down a sleeve but unharmed, taking off across the roof and out of Cougar’s line of sight.</p><p>Something about this has him on edge. It’s going too smoothly, there’s been too little conflict, something’s <em>wrong</em>—</p><p>And that’s when he hears Jensen get caught over the radios, distracting him from his surroundings because he can’t help, and that’s when an unfortunately familiar red dot appears on his arm. The sound of guards behind him just tells him what he already knows.</p><p>Fuck.</p><p>---</p><p>Twice. Twice in twenty-four hours.</p><p>Twice, someone’s turned on them. Twice, his team’s been on the wrong end of a gun.</p><p>Twice, he’s stuck watching someone he cares about get hurt.</p><p>Some small part of him is almost thankful it’s Pooch instead because if Jensen got hurt again, he can’t say for sure what would have happened.</p><p>And the twisted part from earlier is clawing for attention, calling for someone’s blood. Roque’s blood, Aisha’s blood. <em>Someone</em> better die for the pain his team, his <em>family,</em> is going through.</p><p>His trigger finger itches and the asshole pressing a gun to his head isn’t helping, not when he’s the one who shot Pooch, not when he’s their literal firing squad.</p><p>Cougar can’t help but bare his teeth in something like a grin because like <em>fuck</em> he’s going down without a fight, pissing the guard off, when the one person Cougar wants to see <em>least</em> in the world catches his eyes. She’s wielding a <em>rocket launcher</em> and helping them.</p><p>He should be thankful, he knows, but he looks at her and all he can hear is a gunshot and Jensen yelling and the anger from earlier crashes back over him like a wave coming in at high tide.</p><p>It’s new, recurring anger like this. He’s been good at compartmentalizing, at taking things and putting them <em>away</em> once they’re done with. Even Bolivia, he mourned the kids that died, but he didn’t let himself get <em>stuck</em> on it, because down that path lay a twisted mess of blame and guilt. It had taken longer but he’d packed it up and set it aside, only using it to remind himself why he wanted Max dead, and he had tight enough control over himself to not let it slip into anything else.</p><p>Aisha wormed her way in and directly hurt Jensen, who had been <em>unarmed</em>. Jensen’s not even great at hand-to-hand, even, so he was the opposite of a threat. If she wanted to take anyone out, it should have been him. Maybe Clay.</p><p>On some level, he’s grateful for her interference, for her assistance, but it’s a small part and one that does nothing to quell the rest of his anger, though the sight of a bandage on her arm in the exact same place as Jensen’s helps slightly.</p><p>At least she was hurt too.</p><p>---</p><p>He keeps a tight lid on it until later, until they’re in a safe house, one of several that Jensen’s acquired over the years, because they work special ops and special ops can lead to some <em>shit</em>.</p><p>But once they’re in a safe house, once Pooch is laid up in a bed, medicated until it stops hurting enough to sleep, once things are calmer, Cougar pulls his gun on her. It’s just his pistol and he hasn’t even cocked it, but it makes his intentions clear.</p><p>“Cougar,” Clay says but Cougar keeps his eyes and his gun on Aisha.</p><p>Aisha, for her part, seems to recognize that he’s both completely serious and willing to go against whatever orders Clay gives here. That he regards her as responsible for both the dissolution of their family and the physical pain two of them have gone through now.</p><p>That <em>Jensen </em>has gone through, because as much as he cares about Pooch, Jensen is his best friend and Cougar has killed people for doing less than Aisha has when Jensen is the target.</p><p>After another moment where he doesn’t move, Clay snaps out, “Cougar!”</p><p>It’s an order he ignores. They’re not military anymore, Clay’s no longer his commanding officer. He still follows Clay, but it’s a choice, not duty. So he’s not obligated to obey anymore, not if he disagrees.</p><p>And if he’s being frank, he wouldn’t obey the implicit order even then, not when he’s staring down the woman responsible for the eight stitches in Jensen’s upper arm. Not when he can trace a significant portion of their recent problems right back to her. They’d been stagnating in Bolivia, sure, but they’d have gotten out of it eventually. And now they’ve lost Roque and Pooch and Jensen have both been shot.</p><p>He’s angry. He’s furious.</p><p>
And his control is gone and all he wants right now is to pull the damned trigger. Even just a hit in her arm again would make him feel better.</p><p>Cougar cocks the gun, the <em>click</em> loud in the otherwise-silent room.</p><p>“<em>Cougar!</em>”</p><p>“Cougar, don’t.” The voice isn’t Clay’s and Cougar relaxes, lowering his gun at the request. Jensen sounds as exhausted as Cougar feels and ends up leaning on him when he gets close enough. “Not worth it.”</p><p>He disagrees with <em>that</em>, but he puts the gun away anyway, because Jensen asked him to. He doesn’t let her off the hook, though, because he can’t.</p><p>“Never again,” he says and Aisha nods, though he doubts she understands just how serious he is about this. “<em>Never</em> again.”</p><p>---</p><p>It happens again. It’s three months and three thousand miles away, when Jensen has to go in, like Goliath again.</p><p>But this time, there’s no convenient skyscraper nearby for him to snipe from. This time Jensen’s <em>alone</em> and his only backup is sitting in a van with the building security feeds open on a laptop.</p><p>When the first guard fires, Jensen’s shoulder jerks and Cougar’s fingers twitch around the parts of his rifle in his hands, eyes rising to meet Aisha’s. This mission was her idea. It’s her contact Jensen was supposed to meet.</p><p>This is <em>her</em> fault.</p><p>He wonders if she knows he’ll make good on his threat.</p><p>Going by the way her face twitches, eyes dipping to the rifle barrel in his hand, she does. The obvious display of nerves makes Cougar bare his teeth in what might be generously called a smile.</p><p>Good.</p>
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